Craig Derrick Email & Phone Number

Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom

Maritime technical author position.

Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom

Technical authoring and illustrator consultancy.

Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom

Getting 500+ bakery equipment manuals under control by converting them from Microsoft Word to Structured FrameMaker (XML, DITA 1.3). Giving them a major tidy-up and graphical makeover at the same time.

Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom

Provided technical writing services to engineering/manufacturing companies (Solartron, Mobrey, and Emerson Automation Solutions) for over 20 years. I worked closely with people at all levels to create and maintain product data sheets, manuals and other technical documents for their liquid/gas/solids measurement Instrumentation and steam/water detection systems.Current experience includes: Oxygen (DITA/XML) and XDocs [3+ years]; Adobe FrameMaker [12 years to 2019 version]; Solidworks Professional for creating 3D images [10 years to 2019 version), Adobe Illustrator for creating 2D images [12 years to latest version]), and Adobe Acrobat Pro and Microsoft Word [many years]. I always quickly adapt to new and updated packages and technology as they come along.Key achievements:Managing a team to deliver Rosemount 2500 Series Solids Switches technical documentation for a multiple product launch, all within an extreme timescale.Creating the first ever Mobrey Products e-Catalogue. It proved so popular all around the world that Emerson had to stop printing it for free.Fully managing 125+ Mobrey-branded and Rosemount-branded product documents single-handed, which includes product data sheets, manuals, and other technical documents.Self-taught how to use SolidWorks software to create and render 3D product and application images. This was my idea to improve the quality and quantity of images.Revolutionised the Mobrey MCU900 Series and Rosemount 3490 Series quick installation guides with my own 3D images, showing how to install various versions of the control unit.Successfully converting many documents to other formats such as DITA (XML).

Slough, England, United Kingdom

Fully managed all product data sheets, reference manuals, quick start guides, and other documents for the Rosemount and Mobrey brands of level instrumentation at the Slough manufacturing site. Quickly and efficiently re-branded Solartron instrumentation and systems to Rosemount and Mobrey brands. Handled large-scale updates required within extreme timescales, typically involving an expired product approval, new EU regulation, and more re-branding. Managed translations and publishing.Successfully converted many product documents to FrameMaker versions, and more recently successfully converted those to DITA (XML 1.3) versions.Delivered new and updated product documents in English and other languages for many projects, including several with extreme timescales. The Rosemount 2500 Solids Switches project required me to manage a team to convert an external company's Indesign documents to DITA (XML) versions within the tightest deadline ever for launching 5 products with differing technologies simultaneously. It was a very satisfying result and the pinnacle of my contract work with Emerson to deliver that on-time and translated to 20+ languages.

Slough, England, United Kingdom

Created and maintained data sheets and user manuals for the Solartron and Mobrey brands of liquid level measurement instrumentation. This included all of the Solartron products plus Mobrey vibrating fork liquid level switches (Squing 2/Squitch), ultrasonic level and flow transmitters (MSP Series), ultrasonic gap level sensors and control units, displacement transmitter (MLT100), controller units (MCU Series), and dry solids level switches. Over 125 product documents were successfully managed single-handed.

Farnborough, England, United Kingdom

Created and maintained user manuals for level, density, viscosity, and flow measurement instrumentation. This product lines included transducers and transmitters (3098 and 78xx), flow computers and signal converters (795x Series), and steam/water detection systems (Hydrastep/Hydratect). Solartron Limited was taken over by Mobrey Limited in 2000.

Frimley, Surrey, United Kingdom

The company was a consultancy/software house providing "Information Systems Solutions" - POS terminals and software written in FoxPro - for the retail and hospitality industry. Churchill no longer exists.

Germany

I developed and maintained PC (Client/Server) applications and UNIX programs for 12 months. I then accepted a new contract to stay an additional month to continue my work and train two new placement students.